Massive fireball in the Russian sky: nuclear test in space?

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(just displacing this from Random to this forum, looks more appropriate)



This was recorded in the sky of Siberia, on Nov 14, 2014, and is definitively one of my "special interests" as an Asperger's Syndrome diagnosed person.
So this fireball was recorded in video, several people saw it, it was near Yekaterinburg.
I tried to write a Wikipedia article (not allowed to post URLs, so here it is en DOT wikipedia DOT org/wiki/Yekaterinburg_Fireball) which I have kept factual even though there is "original content" there.

The fact is, there is really no other explanation, I think, than a nuclear bomb in space.
Could it be a meteoroid ? The local astronomers indicated "nothing fell from the sky on the day of the flash".
An on-ground explosion, as the Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations claimed it ? No noise, no vibration, no smoke, no fire. No post-explosion pictures of the place of the explosion (which would be according to the ministry a kind of gunpowder warehouse). And it seems very unlikely that this expanding fire in the sky is simply the reflection of something happening on the ground.

The CTBTO, the organism watching for nuclear tests worldwide, of which Russia is a member, has no independent way to watch for high altitude nuclear tests. It can monitor underground, underwater or atmospheric nuclear tests (they have sismometers, marine detectors for underwater shockwaves, atmospheric detectors for airbursts and "noses" for fission products) but has no satellites for high altitude tests and, on that, relies on data provided by Member States (that's what they repeatedly told me).

There was, in Yekaterinburg, just days after the flash, a conference of the Russian NATO, the Collective Security Treaty Organisation, on... missile / air defence. What better than a nuclear bomb to intercept an incoming ICBM ? My guess is : the flash was a demonstration of Russian interception capabilities.
Furthermore, it has been 25 years since Russia last did a nuclear test, and they have no way to simulate nuclear explosions with computers (unlike the USA or France, for instance). So probably they needed to check whether their bombs were still able to work.

High altitude nuclear bombs usually created an electromagnetic pulse... except if it happens at a time of strong solar activity, and Autumn 2014 was a period of high solar activity. It was also the height of the Ukrainian crisis, and you know the Russians are totally paranoïd, always convinced they may be under attack...

The initial flash of the nuclear bomb (the blinding flash) cannot be seen there but there was a very thick layer of clouds and my guess is that it blocked the flash. But at high altitudes, since the air isn't dense, fireballs can grow very largely, and this is what you can see in the pictures and in videos (see t[DOT]co/0wEwqbWCnx).

So what do you think ? I really see no other plausible explanation for a nuclear explosion for so bright a flash.

Still though, I don't seem to recall anything about electronics, especially digital electronics suddenly being bricked by either this event or solar activity, so I think no in regards to a high altitude atomic explosion.

thank our lucky stars for that

Probably just a meteor exploding in the atmosphere. Anything else would have been noticed and big news worldwide, especially a nuclear explosion and resulting EMP disrupting electronics and satellites.

As I said high altitude nuclear bombs usually created an electromagnetic pulse... except if it happens at a time of strong solar activity, and Autumn 2014 was a period of high solar activity.

Furthermore, as I also said, no meteorite was recorded in the sky in Siberia at that time. You can check in the Meteoritical Society website. Also that's what said local astronomers to journalists of the Siberian Times, a local English speaking newspaper : no meteorite fell in the area on that day.

And why would the Russian government have claimed it was an on ground explosion if it was a meteorite ? They would simply have said it's a meteorite !

It's worse than "no claim", there is a DIFFERENT claim, i.e. the Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations said it was an on ground explosion. Hence why do you all think it's a meteoroid ? If it were a meteoroid the Ministry would simply have told the truth.